Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/16/there-we-did-something.html
…
4 Likes
Thus endeth the Naughty Nanny state.
8 Likes
…though the data would have been covered by EU-wide privacy laws.
Well, for a couple more weeks, anyway.
3 Likes
It was only a matter of time before the Tories realised that sites devoted to nannies spanking bad boys in school uniforms would be counted as porn.
8 Likes
I know you’re joking, sort of, but I feel compelled to say it’ll certainly be longer than that; and Brexit still hasn’t happened and may yet not.
Like Brexit, this project was a Cameron clusterfuck to appease the Daily Mail readership; that it’s failed should give us all hope (as well as exasperation at the incompetence of our partially-elected leaders).
1 Like
I’ve often wondered why porn sites couldn’t agree to a simple self-identification approach. For example, “all pornsites should have a .xxx domain”. Most of the big porn sites are not hiding anything. They’re not trying to pretend they are not porn sites. They probably account for a huge percent of online porn. You could then put easy parental controls that screen out all .xxx. Clever people (including children) would figure out a way around it, and some sites would decline to participate, but nobody gets hurt and porn becomes a wee bit less accessible to the youngsters.
2 Likes
Any odds on when it will rise from the dead in some mutated form?
My hunch is, if a no-deal Brexit goes forward, it’ll find a way to come back as a form of distraction, if nothing else.
3 Likes
This battle has been won but turds like this always have a way of resurfacing.
2 Likes
R.I.P.
(Rest In Porn)
1 Like
“That which is not dead can eternal lie…”
It’ll be back, when the polls are right.
4 Likes
Probably the next time they need a distraction from some other clusterfuck.
3 Likes
I’m not a subject matter expert; but I think these sorts of proposals(.xxx TLD, “clean port 80”, etc.) have tended to founder in part because they take flack from both sides.
The really serious moral crusaders get deeply leery of the idea because, at least implicitly and often explicitly, having a ‘correct’ self identification method is seen as a slightly backhanded flavor of legitimacy. Unless you think that porn has a place, or are sufficiently pragmatic to recognize that your belief to the contrary is unlikely to be relevant; you aren’t going to like a proposal that involves giving it its very own place, with official recognition and everything.
On the other side, while the porn purveyors mostly don’t want children(some on ethical grounds, some to avoid legal flack and/or moral panic; some because people too young for credit cards are poor online customers unless you are legit enough to be selling top-up tokens at retail(as xbox live and such do); they do want a certain amount of ambiguity: many reliable adult customers would probably be less accessible if they had to outright declare “No, I don’t want my internet connection/filter settings to block .xxx domains; because reasons that, um, my spouse would definitely be OK with so perhaps we don’t need to mention it…”
Reactions founded on the very much less than inspiring history of what happens after you are thoughtfully provided your very own ghetto probably don’t help; as doesn’t the fact that filtering mechanisms based on self-classification are even weaker than usual against motivated attempts to sneak stuff through them.
4 Likes
You just wait and see what they’ll try to shoehorn into the Online Harms bill they allege they’ll bring instead.
(And @Pensketch, @politeruin, @RickMycroft )
The culture secretary, Nicky Morgan, told parliament the policy would be abandoned. Instead, the government would instead focus on measures to protect children in the much broader online harms white paper. This is expected to introduce a new internet regulator, which will impose a duty of care on all websites and social media outlets – not just pornography sites.
Above is quoted from this:
ETA While on one hand I see the need for regulation of some sort regarding some activities (e.g. re Facebook, Google, etc.) on the other, the concept of Nicky Morgan’s internet regulator makes as much sense as a ‘telephone conversations regulator’. Which, if the telephone were invented today and IS and/or paedophiles were using it to commumicate, you can bet governments would be trying to introduce.
3 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
